Day: March 22, 2019

Alexander and Alistair waited in line to check on their flight. It didn’t matter how long the line was, or how tired they were of waiting in it, they were happy to be getting away for a week. Life had not been difficult, but it was still nice to finally get away–alone.

Alexander couldn’t wait to show Alistair around Pompeii and Alistair couldn’t wait to show Alexander around his old home. They enjoyed people watching in the airport and passed time telling stories of the old days.

Finally, it was their turn to check in. Alexander sat his luggage in the bin and watched as a scrawny kid retrieved it and threw it on a conveyor belt. He cringed and crossed his fingers that his cologne didn’t break.

It wasn’t until they were standing by the large window at their gate watching their luggage be thrown around like last week’s trash that they noticed it. Something was not right.

“Hey, Alistair,” Alexander said, pointing out to the luggage cart. “Do you see that?”

Alistair followed Alexander’s finger and squinted. “Yeah. What is that?”

When Mark found the letters, he rolled his eyes. Who cared about old letters from a long-dead relative of some sort. He flung them into a file box and lugged them downstairs. Lightening flashed and thunder rolled outside, taking the power with it.

“Dammit!” Mark plopped on the couch and slammed the remote on the coffee table.

After a few hours of sitting in the dark, Mark was bored out of his mind. Six o’clock was too early for any self-respecting twenty-two year old to go to bed, so he flicked the lid off the file box and picked up the top letter.

“Intriguing,” he said, after reading the first line. He had to find out whose hand had been running up and down her thigh secretly under the dining room table.

Mark set the flashlight on the coffee table and started sorting the letters by date.

The sun was up as the lights flickered on. He wiped the sweat from his brow and checked the time on his phone. “She’ll be up by now.”

“Hello?”

“MOM!”

“Oh my God, what’s wrong, Mark!”

“What? Sorry, nothing’s wrong, but you won’t believe what I found.”

“You’ll find a dead mother if you scream like that as soon as I pick up the phone. Sheesh. What’d you find out?”

“Great grandpa isn’t our great grandpa…Great grandma was quite the –“

“Oh, good lord, you found the letters?”

“Wait, you knew about them? Why are you laughing? What’s so funny?”

“Mom?”

“Mom! Stop laughing. What is it?”

“Oh, Mark, your Great grandma was a writer.”

“So? No way this is made up!”

“You know that ladies often wrote under a pseudonym back then. Especially when they wrote what she did.”

“So, what was her pen name then?”

“WHAT!” Mark jumped up and grabbed his Kindle. His eyes widened as he searched the name. “Um…”

“Yeah, Mark, we just didn’t have the heart to tell you that you liked reading your great grandma’s porn.”

David thought the sign read 1500 yard huddles, and they misprinted the word hurdles. It happens, right? The day of the race arrived and he was ready. Shoes laced, number pinned, starting pistol fired, and he was off. Last place. Who knew the IOC added puddle jumping to their hurdles course?